3 Reasons Why Rick Perry Will Be Very Tough To Take Down In Court

Governor Rick Perry of Texas speaking at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana. Please attribute to Gage Skidmore if used elsewhere. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Susan Klein, a professor at UT-Austin School of Law, torched the indictment. "I think the Perry indictment is tragic. It makes my beloved city of Austin a national laughingstock. I am embarrassed to be a liberal Democrat. I consider Perry's behavior ungentlemanly but certainly not illegal," she told TPM. "I see nothing in the indictment that would lead me to believe there is anything for the government to prove. I think the statutes were designed to prevent bribery, extortion or fraud, not use of the Governor's veto authority." Many legal experts say the case against Perry is weak. Would a grand jury really send a governor to jail for exercising his veto power? The two-page indictment is vague and leaves many questions unanswered about what the grand jury was told and what legal avenues the prosecution intends to pursue. Legal experts raise three big problems with convicting Perry, a task that'll fall to special prosecutor Michael McCrum, who was tapped by a Republican-appointed state judge.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is one of the least thoughtful and most damaging state leaders in America, having done great harm to immigrants, abortion clinics and people without health insurance during his 14 years in office. But bad political judgment is not necessarily a felony, and the indictment handed up against him on Friday — given the facts so far — appears to be the product of an overzealous prosecution. For more than a year, Mr. Perry has been seeking the resignation of the Travis County district attorney, Rosemary Lehmberg. He had good reason to do so: Ms. Lehmberg was arrested in April 2013 for driving with a blood alcohol level of more than three times the legal limit, and she verbally abused the officers who found her with an open bottle of vodka. She ranted and raved at the local jail, threatening sheriff’s deputies, and she had to be restrained in a chair with a hood over her head. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 45 days in jail. In addition to endangering people’s lives, she instantly lost her credibility as a prosecutor of drunken-driving cases.

But the problem facing prosecutors, in the Perry case and the others noted above, is this: State officials have tremendous power, and many of them abuse that power for personal benefit. But many state officials also engage in unseemly conduct and hardball politics that do not clearly cross the line of illegality. In those cases, as I’ve written in relation to former U.S. Sen. John Edwards, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, and now Rick Perry, we run the danger of the criminalization of ordinary politics. And a prosecutor’s desire to make a name for herself, the potential for partisan prosecutions, and the public’s desire to ferret out corruption that it believes to be rampant all push prosecutors into pursuing sometimes novel or dubious legal theories against high public officials. There is very little incentive in the other direction.